How little estimate most people have of what sin is in God's sight! You will hear persons talk of being sinners in a general way, little thinking what a tremendous thing sin is before Him-how difficult it was to put it away! so difficult that none but God could put it away-and that only by the death of His Son! You will hear it said that an evil conception is not sin, unless it is carried into action. Mere natural conscience is shocked by an evil act; but men do not ask themselves why Christ had to die. why God gave a law to forbid the evil that was there in their hearts. Thus they do not believe that they are sinful and away from God. When man did go away from God-when God drove him out from the garden-He took care that man should carry a conscience with him. A terrible companion it is too, if it is violated; but still in reality a great mercy, because God works in it to bring him to a sense of his state. This is a mercy.
Paul was a blameless man in a natural conscience till that light shone down into his soul; then the enmity of his heart to God was expose& Yet the light that exposed his heart shone from the face of Him who had borne the judgment of God which was upon that heart.
You hear people say, too, that they expect to go to heaven; they take it for granted they will go; but they don't care about heaven at all. It is easy to say you expect to go, when in reality you don't care about Christ.
If I tell you a man has got an estate in Russia, you say: well I But if I were to say, you have one, see how anxious you will be to make your title and possession of it sure. Is there anything that marks the insensibility of souls more than the carelessness they evince about their state before God; or anything that shows how far they are from God, than the utter indifference they manifest to the things of heaven and Christ? Adam gave up all that God was to him for the sake of eating a fruit; and this is what sinners are doing every day. They are giving up God for the things of the world continually. A ribbon-an amusement, has more power over them than all God's beseeching love-than all the grace of Christ! Like the young man, with great possessions, they go "away sorrowful" when they hear of the reality of their state; but still they "go away." This brings, out the utter ruin of your heart-that there is not one atom of God there!
The Holy Ghost is pleading with sinners, " Be ye reconciled to God," and sinners don't care. But when God is revealed to my soul, I discover that there is sin there, which must, in itself, shut me out from God forever. But when I discover that, that. is the very thing for which He gave Himself-for which He bore the wrath and died; thus accomplishing for me, and revealing to my heart the unsought love of God! God has come in in mercy and dealt with the very sins and state which troubled me, in His own Son in righteousness, in order that He might be free to express His love-to deal with me in grace. He has dealt in holiness against my sin, and that before the day of judgment comes, so that I can say, I have peace with God.
How dreadful then, in the face of all this, to find the sinner going on in sin; with that for which Christ has been delivered-that which caused the death of the Son of God. Think of being the cause of Christ's death, and yet if I was, which is true, He died to put my sins away. Wonderful for a sinner to be able to say, "I believe that this blessed One did drink the cup of wrath and died; and that so surely as He drank it, He is at God's right hand, my Savior!" This is what brings the heart back to confidence in God-the very thing that Adam lost. What He wants you, sinners, to believe is His love. He spared not His Son! That Son gave Himself that you might be with Himself forever. This perfect grace takes guile out of the heart; there is no need for any concealment of your state-no need for guile. You can rest in Divine and perfect favor, and know God better than yourself; and the way you will know yourself best will be to look at God. Can you not then say: I believe unfeigned that He gave His Son for me; and I am at peace with God, and rejoicing in the hope of His glory. There I can boast in God joy in Him through our Lord Jesus. This gives full Christian character.
Oh, what a God we have to do with! One who commends His own love to us as sinners, and desires we should enjoy it, and be at peace with God. One who sheds His love abroad in our hearts by the Holy. Spirit given to us. It is peaceful joy to the heart to think of what He is to us-poor, lost, self-ruined sinners. Rising in the triumph of grace above our wretchedness. 'Tis thus the Holy Ghost ever reasons-downward from what God is in His goodness, to us who are in ourselves nothing but evil. Blessed for those who find in truth that the cross of Christ has answered to all His glory. Solemn the state of those who are satisfied to sit in darkness, and the unbelief and insensibility of sin. F. G. P.